Conceptualism of the 1960s and 70s, to the 80s ad- Angus Fairhurst vertising appropriation tactics of Prince and Koons, All Body and Text Removed Fairhurst was, as critic Sacha Craddock suggests “too April 2 - May 28, 2016 much a member of his generation to believe in art as pure invention (and so) creates a concentrated reality.” Opening Reception: Saturday, April 2, 6-8pm The nine works presented in the exhibition - layered magazine collages, bus stop billboard collages, a seminal early photo work, and four looped animations - reveal a number of themes intrinsic to the artist’s work. One is his interest in the manipulation of images, through processes of adding, layering, fragmenting, removing, repeating and obscuring - transformative impulses that were central to the artist’s work from the very beginning right through to the end of his 20 year career. As critic Claire Bishop has aptly stated, “Fair- hurst’s work revolves around an epic sense of collapse, of disintegration of form, and renewal.” Handmade - using “analog” media, namely the printed magazine and the bus stop poster -Fairhurst’s collages excise the human figure, as well as the text, from glossy advertisements, removing the subject from its context. By a process of layering the cut imagery, the mise-en- scéne, the idealized and luxurious environments of fashion and consumer culture, is brought to the fore, then collapses again. The layers of brightly colored planes and positive and negative space advance and recede, yet they are part of a coherent whole verging on abstraction that simultaneously draws attention to the “Keep adding until you can’t add anything else. Take human form in its ghostly absence, the silhouette. everything away until there is nothing left” ~Angus Fairhurst, 2001 This seeming absence of the figure in the collages find a counterpoint in the other works in the exhibition, the Meliksetian | Briggs is pleased to present All Body and self portrait Pietà (1996) and the four animated videos Text Removed, an exhibition of works by influential in the Strange Loops series (1995-96), where the body British artist Angus Fairhurst (1966-2008). Encompass- comes to the forefront. Pietà is Fairhurst’s contempo- ing several of the key aspects of Fairhurst’s practice rary take on the iconographic Christian subject, a figure – including his multilayered collages, photography and in a “cheap and ill-fitting Gorilla suit” taking the place cyclical animations – the exhibition bears witness to of the Virgin Mary and a naked Fairhurst himself as the his enduring fascination with concepts of reduction, dead Jesus cradled in her arms. Iconoclastic yet absurd, repetition and removal. This is the first posthumous bordering on surreal, the work has a slapstick pathos, exhibition of Fairhurst’s work in the United States. tragic but amusing. Fairhurst was a key member of a group of post-con- The figure of the Gorilla is a recurring motif in Fair- ceptual artists associated with Goldsmith’s College in hurst’s work appearing in early drawings from the London that became the phenomenon known as the 1990s to his later monumental bronze sculptures and Young British Artists (or YBAs), beginning in the early is seen in this exhibition alongside Pietà in the Strange 1990s. Working in a wide variety of media, among Loop animations. The Gorilla is a stand in for the self, them painting, photo, performance, music, sculpture, anthropomorphic, with a form analogous to the human, collage, installation and animations, with conceptual an alter ego, or animal “other.” In Strange Loops – Strip- rigor and wry humor, Fairhurst eschewed a signature ping, a gorilla peels the skin away from a human figure style and his work resisted easy categorization. like a banana only to reveal the same figure beneath, a Sisyphean task repeated endlessly. In Strange Loops - Taking a variety of conceptual strategies as a given, Dissecting, the Gorilla’s form fragments into bands of from the Dadaist and Surrealist assemblage and graphic symbols, patterns and marks, a figure reduced collage of Schwitters and Picabia, via “classic” to a indecipherable or unknowable code. 313 N. Fairfax Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90036 [email protected] (323) 828-4731 meliksetianbriggs.com In our high speed image-based culture, Fairhurst’s work is more relevant than ever. High sheen, glossy surfaces appear immaculately made yet fragmented, interrupt- ed, decontextualized and dislocated, and are then recombined in a cohesive whole on the one hand; while remaining resolutely low fi on the other. His work might be read as a metaphor for disconnection and alienation in our hyper-connected society, but it never loses its human qualities - beautiful, absurd, ironic, witty and melancholic, yet hopeful and optimistic. Angus Fairhurst: All Body and Text Removed is present- ed in association with The Angus Fairhurst Estate and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Angus Fairhurst’s work has been exhibited widely including at the seminal exhibition Freeze, curated by Damien Hirst that introduced the generation that became known as the Young British Artists, and set the tone for contemporary art in the UK over the following two decades. Other important exhibitions include Gam- bler (1991), Building One, London; Brilliant, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (1995); Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away, Serpentine Gallery, London (1994); Apocalypse, Royal Academy , London (2000); Casino 2001, SMAK, Ghent (2001) and the 3 person show, In-a-Gadda-da- Vida with Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst, Tate Britain, London (2004). Significant solo shows include Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK (2001), and Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal, Germany and Kunsthalle St.Gallen, Switzer- land. From 2009-11, a retrospective of his work travelled between Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, UK, M Museum, Leuven, Belgium, and Westfälischer Kunstverein, Muenster, Germany. Sadie Coles HQ has held 6 solo exhibitions of his work, the 2013 exhibition curated by Urs Fischer and Rebecca Warren and the 2015 show focusing on the animations. Angus Fairhurst’s work is included in numerous major collections including that of Tate, which also houses his archive of video and animation, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the MoMA/Museum of Modern Art, New York City and the British Council Collection among them. A monograph with essays by Sacha Craddock and James Cahill with a foreword by Tate director Nicolas Serota and published by Sadie Coles HQ / PWP is avail- able. 313 N. Fairfax Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90036 [email protected] (323) 828-4731 meliksetianbriggs.com.